First-timers take titles

Sunday

CORNING - A pair of first-timers took top honors at the 37th edition of the Guthrie Wineglass Marathon Sunday.

Trevor VanAckeren, of Bethlehem, Pa., won the event with a time of 2:23:20.13 over the cool and rainy course.

It was only the second marathon for VanAckeren, who earned a third place finish in the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, Pa last fall.

“I knew it would be ambitious to think about winning the race when I saw the course record [2:20:19] but I wanted to give myself that opportunity.” said VanAckeren. “Early in the race, I got the feeling that I could compete for the win today. That wasn’t necessarily the goal coming it, but I was leaving open for a possibility to do so.”

Brianna Deming, from Morristown, NJ, not only set a course record with her time of 2:44.33 - besting Mandy Yates' 2010 mark by a mere two seconds - it also punched her ticket to the 2020 Marathon Olympic Trials due to a sub-2:45 time.

Making the Olympic trials was Deming's main goal, she said.

“I trained the hardest I’ve ever trained in my life,” said Deming. “I can’t believe I made the Olympic trial time. I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it at the end, but I held on as long as possible.”

The time was a personal best for Deming by 11 minutes.

“It was a very nice course,” said Deming. “I like the downhills and it was very scenic. It was a good course.”

Deming has been training 13 weeks for the Wineglass and runs countless miles a week during her training regimen.

“I hit a max of 95 miles per week, a long run, a workout once a week,” said Deming. “A lot of hard work.”

The Marathon Olympic Trials will be held in Atlanta on Feb. 29, 2020, with the top three female runners being chosen to represent the United States in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020.

The 29-year-old VanAckeren showed plenty of emotion when crossing the finish line.

“To finish first was very overwhelming,” said VanAckeren. “I didn’t know where the emotion came from at the end. Ultimately, I think it is about doing something pretty big and finding justification to why I still train so hard as an adult runner.”